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The Way to Liberation

THE CONSISTENCY OF THE SPIRITUAL WAY

The eternal divine light shines within us, far beyond all that can be grasped by our senses and abilities.

But what good is this to us when we are not receptive to the divine in our innermost self, thus becoming further entangled in the creeping snarl of our spiritual confusion? Just as filth covering a golden vessel is unable to detract from the vessel's true nature, the covering filth of ignorance is unable to touch the true eternal self lying hidden within.

"Seek, and you will find!" we are told in the Gospel (Matthew 7:7). This search, however, demands far more of us than we are generally willing to give. The search for divine truth is a search in the sense of an all-consuming longing that culminates in radical self-sacrifice to God. The consistency required in following the spiritual way will necessarily lead us away from everything that is viewed by those bound in ignorance as the highest meaning and purpose of their human existence. And thus it is written in the Katha Upanishad:

Fools chase after external pleasures, and fall into the snare of death. But the wise, knowing immortality, seek not the everlasting in the things that pass away.²⁰

Only those who have no more illusions about the meaning and importance of their small ego and its world can fully appreciate this statement; for nothing is important in the presence of death. Such understanding presumes a great awareness of the transitoriness of everything that is worldly and of the suffering that results from this. The greater the awareness is, the more our wish for redemption grows; this wish can become so intense that it leaves no room for any other wish. In the Indian tradition there is a parable about a disciple whose head was held underwater in the Ganges by his master. When the master asked him afterward what he had thought while underwater, the disciple could only muster the words: "Air, air!" The master then explained, "As long as your longing for God is less than your craving for air while underwater just now, you are still far away from God."

Naturally it is clear to me that the consistency demanded by the spiritual way is not at all soothing or comforting. Still, whoever comes to honest terms with the Gospels will not easily be able to make light of the following statements by Jesus:

Strive with all your strength, to enter through the narrow gate! [Luke 13:24].

Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to (eternal) life, and there are few who find it [Matthew 7:14].

Whoever will be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me [Mark 8:34].

Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead! [Matthew 8:].

We could cite many other such statements, but let us keep to the essential point. To most people, these words of Jesus have a negative, antagonistic tone. But to a few, they are soul-stirring pronouncements that change these people's lives by causing a spiritual about-face in which they are torn loose from all that previously gave meaning and purpose to their every endeavor. In their resolve to leave everything behind and follow only the divine call, such individuals raise themselves above the world of phenomena, thus becoming children of the universal being. The only thing that matters to them is the kingdom of God; everything else must be left behind. It is vital that this not be misunderstood to mean that these people come to despise such worthy things as marriage, family, and society. All these have a higher truth, and those living in the fullness of divine being know to cherish these treasures more than anyone since they have penetrated the essence of things and understand the inexpressible mystery of which these things are a sign. The difference is that these people no longer cling to these treasures or anything else, since they are free of identification. In a radical following of Christ, they leave the affairs of this world as they are and are guided only by what calls to them:

Anyone who has not renounced everything cannot be my disciple! [Luke 14:26].

[Therefore] follow me, and let the dead bury their dead! [Matthew 8:22].

THE CHEERFULNESS OF THE SOUL

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a Gospel of following Christ consistently, which is incompatible with half measures. Only by diluting and downplaying the Christian truth was it possible to bring it to the level of a comfortable, church-elevating, sunken religion. Strictly speaking, following Christ comfortably is by no means following Christ.

People who believe that following the spiritual way can be likened to setting themselves up in comfortable accommodations are gravely mistaken. But it would be equally wrong if we thought that in following the spiritual way we must creep along with the pallbearer mentality often encountered in the false mysticism of suffering promoted by the church.

"Rejoice always!" (1 Thessalonians 5:16) says Paul, and Teresa of Avila (16th century) notes, "A sad saint is a sorry saint." It was to these sad saints that John Climacus (7th century) spoke:

God does not insist or desire that we should mourn in agony of the heart; rather, it is his wish that out of love for him we should rejoice with laughter in our soul.²¹

"Joy" is a favorite word of the New Testament because the message that Jesus brings is a joyful revelation able to yank people out of their hopelessness.

Those who understand with their hearts something of the joy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ should no longer find it difficult to laugh. Laughter, as expression of the cheerfulness of the soul, is precisely what comes hardest to those who are still too attached to their small pseudo-self, the ego. With constant efforts to uphold a mask of earnestness as an expression of their piety, these roving caricatures of Christian sentiment are not very inspiring. Those who take their ego and its world so seriously should perhaps pause to ask themselves how it is that angels can fly. "Why can angels fly? Because they take themselves so lightly!"

That medieval mysticism likened sorrow to an inertia of the heart and considered it to be one of the root sins should make us stop and think. Those who refuse to give joy a place in their hearts by fighting off sorrow have become blind and deaf to the truth of divine being. Francis of Assisi (13th century) speaks to this:

When God's servant attempts to preserve the inner and outer cheerfulness of the spirit, which comes from the purity of the heart, he cannot be harmed by demons, for they would say, "When God's servant remains cheerful in fortune and in misfortune, we are unable to find a door through which to enter into him and we cannot harm him." The devil's part is sorrow, but it is up to us to be forever merry and to rejoice in the Lord.²²

The Christian sense of humor is not exactly proverbial, and it is often said that the strongest argument against the Christian religion is Christians themselves. "Cheerfulness is the final word of every teaching," Mahayana Buddhism tells us. Still many Christians hold the view that joy should be kept at bay. They consider joy to be wrong or diversionary and prefer to persist in the gloominess of church-going respectability. But it is foolish to attempt to lead a spiritual life by becoming stuck in the narrow-mindedness of a puritanical mentality. The seriousness of the spiritual way can easily lead to a lack of humor and intolerance, so that all you see is "the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye" (Matthew 7:3).

This kind of pseudo-religious mentality becomes increasingly evident, the more the inflated ego in its pretense of respectability concerns itself with external appearances. Jesus once got into an argument with the Pharisees and scribes, and attacked their hypocritical pretense of respectability with the sharpest words:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity (Matthew 23: 27-28).

The use of such strong words unmasks the pretense of respectability—of the Pharisees and scribes of today and of all times to come-as sanctimonious hypocrisy. Jesus may have been many things, but one thing he wasn't was—respectable. He represented what he would always represent and what Bernanos called "the great fear of right-thinking people." He was great fear and trouble to those who declared at the time, "He must be gone, away with him," and continue to do so today in that they have disfigured and denigrated his teaching to the point that as an alienating, moralizing theology it is unrecognizable.

Jesus never lived up to the ideal of pseudo-religious clean living. This is evident by what we read in Matthew (11:19):

The son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, "Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners."

The idea of clean living is always paired with a puritanical conscience and spiritual narrowness, and readily appears cloaked as religious earnestness. Just the same, "you will know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16). Where there is no joy, there can be no truth! Great joy has been proclaimed to us, so why we should be down in the dumps? At the beginning of the Gospel it says, "I bring you great joy," and at the end, "They returned to Jerusalem with great joy" (Luke 2:10, 24:52). The Christian church needs to rediscover this great joy, the same great joy that was felt by the disciples when they witnessed the resurrection of the Savior.

But considering that hardened rationalists as well as narrow-minded traditionalists are reluctant to let themselves be roused out of the comfort of their pseudo-religiosity, we will probably have to wait some time for great joy in the church. There is no room for joyful proclamations in a place where people speak only of transgressions and cling to religious dogmas and formulas. "Free yourselves of everything!" Zen tells us, and Jesus says, "The truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). The Tibetan lama Buton wrote in the 14th century:

Cheerfulness of the soul is a means of realizing truth, for in order to come to this realization, the soul, which was restless and confused, must become pure and cheerful.²³

In Jesus's words, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God " (Matthew 5:8).

To be pure in heart, we must first empty ourselves inside, and thus free ourselves of all clinging and identification caused by ego-delusion. When we are empty inside, we are in keeping with what Jesus expressed in the oft misunderstood first beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3). When we empty ourselves of all that God is not, we will be filled with the superabundance of the Godhead. We will have the fullness of life: "And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 13:52). That is why Paul says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is joy" (Galatians 5:22).

Without the message of joy, the Christian religion is incomprehensible and uncompelling. And "good news" that is not joyfully delivered is suspect in every way and contradicts itself. The early church was only successful in the world because it was a messenger of joy; this changed as the joy was lost and the church ceased to be a witness of joy. In sharp contrast to a joyless and sorrowful Christian mentality are, paradoxically, the encouraging words of Jesus himself (John 14:1, 15:11):

Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

THE WORLD AS OUR REFLECTION

Whoever reads the Gospel with the eye of the heart will recognize that Jesus was anything but a wishy-washy, sanctimonious holy man.

Jesus is Christos, meaning he who is filled with the divine spirit. The divine spirit is the fullness of life and the joy that, through Jesus, is reflected as the hope for salvation in people with whom he comes in contact. They are finally able to breathe freely. Oppression falls away from them and joy shines forth.

Such an effect is explicable only in that Jesus not only spoke of joy, but radiated joy himself. The joy he radiated uplifted people in an atmosphere of trust and enthusiasm for God.

This enthusiasm is able to draw us out of our petty fears and worries about everyday matters and the futility of human life. We hear the words of Jesus:

Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you drink; nor about you body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his span of life?

But first seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be yours as well.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble [Matthew 6:25-34].

Worrying is a disease of fallen people who out of a lack of trust in God attempt to construct their own destiny. They look to the future full of fear and look to the past wistfully or with feelings of guilt. The human heart is troubled and spiritual awareness is scattered; thus individuals lose their ability to perceive the presence of divine being that is always there. Since they no longer hear the harmonious sound of the music of life, they are solely aware of "disharmony" in the world. Just like a mirror that reflects only the face that peers into it, the world we perceive reflects only our own state of mind.

An old Tibetan parable illustrates this well. A dog once got lost in a cave with many passages. He suddenly found himself in a big hall, surrounded by a thousand mirrors. He saw nothing but dogs wherever he looked. Frightened and distrustful, he bristled and backed away; since the dogs in the thousand mirrors did the same, he began to growl, snarl, and bare his teeth ferociously. Growing terrified at the huge number of ferocious dogs he saw all around him, he fell into a state of utter confusion. He angrily began to run in circles, which, of course, the dogs in the mirrors did as well. This caused him to run faster and faster until all at once he fell down dead. The only question remaining here is: What would have happened had the poor dog just once wagged his tail?

An Indian proverb says, "The smile that you send out will return to you." We must begin with ourselves, if we want to live to see a joyful and peaceful world; this is spiritual law. We cannot change the picture of the world. The world is only a reflection of our self, and there is little sense in finding fault with a reflection.

People who walk around as victims of anxiety, fearful and tense, need not wonder when their negative attitude, which is seen by others as dismissive, is reflected in their environment. This anxious mentality sets up all sorts of barriers and inhibitions between people, making it impossible for them to recognize the sameness of their original nature. It is fear that keeps someone from being filled with love and sympathy for others, all because the small, limited "I" is afraid of opening itself up to the boundless expanse of the one mind. This fear is the cause of distrust, jealousy, and envy; it turns the "I" into a fortress, opposing all that surrounds it.

TURNING TO THE DIVINE